University Press of Kansas Blog

anti-establishment

UPK author Dr. George Hawley was quoted in this fantastic Toronto Starstory examining Donald Trump’s “anti-establishment” presidential campaign. Hawley’s book, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism offers a complete, complex, and nuanced account of the American right in all its dissonance in history and modern day.

In the story, Hawley states that conservative intellectuals have strategically dealt in anti-establishment populism “with the understanding that they would always be able to remain in control of it…. And now they find themselves completely aghast: they see that someone else is coming along and using those exact same latent tendencies in the electorate to fuel his own rise and is completely not beholden to them, and they’re utterly horrified.”